


Reset

by Nununununu



Series: Reset [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, M/M, Mystery, Non-Graphic Violence, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23776276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: Cassian runs.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/K-2SO
Series: Reset [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721428
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21
Collections: Deadly Intent Exchange





	Reset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



> A treat for Primeideal. I hope you like it :)
> 
> Inspired by the prompts 'timeloop - looping character sees their loved ones dying again and again' & 'timeloop - looping character keeps dying.'
> 
> A touch of mild horror here, perhaps.

Cassian runs.

It’s not the first time. It’s not even the tenth time. It might not even be the twentieth. For all the different methods he’s tried – destroying things subtly, exploding them, sneaking in unnoticed, causing as much of a distraction as he can – none of them have changed what happens to end this loop.

It might be a nightmare. It might be a hallucination. The breath shuddering in his chest and the feeling of his feet pounding on the floor feel real enough, but the stark, harshly lit corridor he’s in seems to stretch out impossibly each time, ever longer.

It might be that he’s already dead.

He’s not the one who’s important here. K-2SO is ahead of him, standing at the far end of that never-ending corridor. K-2, who has his hands starting to rise in order to –

Do what?

The most likely possibility seems to be an act of violence. K-2 is turned away from Cassian. Cassian can only see his antennae, the back of his chassis; the back of his head. His lover’s shoulders starting to lift out of that habitual slump, something having startled or angered or alarmed him.

There is someone else – _something_ else – there at the far end of the corridor, facing K-2, most of it hidden by the droid. A shifting shadow. A prickling sensation on the back of Cassian’s neck, all of his senses informing him of the danger, screaming at him to get out of sight and get down.

He ignores it; keeps running.

The creature isn’t familiar; isn’t any of the known races in the Rebellion’s databanks; isn’t synthetic or possibly even a ‘creature’ at all. But there are bodies strewn around the corridor of this Imperial warship, bodies Cassian is darting around and jumping over and trying not to look too closely at, although he has made himself do an inspection of each one several times – Imperials lying crumpled and looking never more human.

Cassian has been through this loop enough now that he can already see the outcome playing in front of his eyes. Is shouting for K-2, although his voice makes no sound, just as his boots make no sound against the floor of the corridor.

_Kay!_ Cassian would be yelling if the droid could hear him, and combinations of _get down get away get out of here kill it with fire just kill it let me kill it just_ don’t die _–_

_Please.  
_

It never works. Cassian runs and shouts until all the silence feels like it tears at his throat, and the creature –

Does something, darkness sinking in through the gaps in K-2’s chassis like sentient smoke.

K-2 falls.

There is never any noise, never any tremor to the floor when he lands face up. Nothing to indicate his total shut down except for the fact that, when Cassian reaches him – because of course it is then that he reaches him, of course it is only ever when he is too late – K-2’s optics are out, his systems crashed, his core extinguished.

Cassian crashes to his knees beside his lover, hands shaking as they touch K-2’s chestplate, hoping – even now, so very many times on – hoping for something, _something_ –

K-2 is cold.

It’s not the coolness of smooth durasteel Cassian remembers so desperately as he clutches his lover as if by doing so he can somehow wake K-2 up. He’s been through this _so many times_ – he may have never expected to be granted the opportunity to say goodbye, but to be forced to witness his lover’s death _over and over and over_ –

No. He never expected to have what time they had. A handful of days together in total if he adds the time up, pieced together out of a patchwork of hours between missions, between war councils, between undercover work and supply runs and skirmishes and many things far more awful than that. Snatching instances to be together and knowing even that was a luxury; a selfishness.

Cassian wishes he had been more selfish.

K-2 is cold.

His plating isn’t heating as it absorbs the warmth of Cassian’s skin – instead the cold is bitter, bone deep, spreading up Cassian’s fingers and palms into his wrists, and all the way up to his arms. A sharp skitter of sensation across his shoulders, like –

Something is behind him.

It’s the creature. He already knows it’s the creature, even before he turns; before he raises the blaster he’s been holding in his other hand all along – the restraining bolt – the vibroknife – the grenade.

None of the weapons have ever had any affect. Cassian screams at the creature sometimes, questions it, demands answers, demands information, pleads for –

_K-2_

Is the last thing he sees as the creature’s darkness floods inside him, if he’s lucky. On many of the loops he hasn’t been granted that much, and that perhaps hurts the worst. To fight to get one last glimpse, one last second to look at his lover, only to fail.

No. The fact he got to kneel by K-2 at all and touch him and murmur to him, even unheard, is still more than he thought he would get. On many of the loops, also, he hasn’t managed that much. _Those_ are the ones that hurt the worst.

Cassian dies just as silently as K-2, even if sometimes he might still be shouting.

He wakes up again, always. On the floor at the other end of that corridor, back at the beginning, back with that impossible distance between his lover and himself. But it can’t last forever –

Cassian is deep down utterly certain that it can –

It _can’t_ last forever; there has to be a way. Some means he hasn’t discovered yet of destroying the creature, of saving K-2.

Of discovering what K-2 had been about to do with his hands. Of perhaps even seeing, just for a heartbeat, his lover’s face.

And so Cassian gets to his feet and makes himself survey all those bodies; reviews all the lost chances, all the times he can learn from and adapt and seek to change. All those chances he can only hope he has left yet before him until breaking this loop.

K-2 is at the far end of the corridor, turned away from Cassian. There is a darkness there too, a creature, a threat.

Cassian runs.


End file.
